In what they call the “David vs. Goliath” challenge, Bucks County officials Wednesday launched a widespread lawsuit against a major social media company, accusing it of sparking a growing mental health crisis among teenagers in the country. announced.
Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub said at a press conference: “We will protect the children of our county and hold them accountable for the damage they have done.
A civil lawsuit filed in California federal court alleges that the companies behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube exacerbated conditions such as anxiety and depression among young people through the app, particularly in Bucks County schools. claim.
The complaint cites social media’s role in fostering addiction and negative self-image, and seeks accountability and unspecified financial damages for the rising cost of mental health services provided by the county to young people. increase.
Meta spokesperson Liza Crenshaw said: Crenshaw outlined the various tools the company offers her teens and their parents. This includes parent-controlled usage limits and notifications to periodically interrupt scrolling. Crenshaw said the company moderates content related to suicide, self-harm and eating disorders, she added. A TikTok spokesperson explained similar safeguards in her email.
A Snap Inc. spokeswoman said the company is working with major mental health organizations on Snapchat’s in-app tools. The company launched in 2020 a feature that connects at-risk users to his mental health resources. Parents can monitor a teen’s friend list without revealing the content of the conversation.
Commissioners Weintraub and Bucks consider their lawsuit to be the first. County governments are targeting Silicon Valley. U.S. Surgeon General Deemed a Youth Crisis Last Year.
Teens are now mentally worse off than they were before the pandemic, according to Bucks County school statistics.
A 2022 study found that 34% of school-age youth in the region were at risk of moderate to severe depression, and a similar proportion reported anxiety disorders. Meanwhile, more than 25% of his students reported a history of suicidal ideation.
These numbers follow Instagram’s nationwide attention. Its parent company, her Meta, reportedly knew Instagram’s app was linked to poor mental health and self-image among young women. Report unprecedented rate of grief.
As such, Bucks County officials describe “literal and figurative boundaries” at youth-facing county social services agencies with in-school counseling, outpatient and family-based treatment, and mobile crisis units. Now, schools have also had to pay for mental health training for their staff.
Officials emphasized the financial burden of expanding these programs, but did not provide direct figures on costs to the county when asked.
“Historically, these services have been backed by Bucks County taxpayers,” said county attorney Jo Kern. “Today, this lawsuit will change that.”
With the help of a San Francisco law firm, the county is filing a flurry of allegations that social media use is having a negative effect on teenagers. In a 104-page document, they say companies are complicit in keeping young people online “nearly all the time” using algorithms that target dopamine responses in the brain, causing distraction during class. and sleep deprivation.
The county also alleges that the company violated Pennsylvania’s consumer protection and unfair trade laws by selling products to young people and data to advertisers.
Officials have even linked violent teen behavior to social media. They cite the arrest of his 15-year-old Bucks County teenage boy in 2022. The boy threatened to “shoot” Central Bucks High School West on Snapchat, and later he used TikTok to spread a video of the shooting to students.
Social media virality has also come under attack, such as the 2021 TikTok “Illicit Licking Challenge.” A Bucks County student damaged school property after being encouraged to rip bathroom fixtures from the fixtures. In another challenge, a teenager, along with a delivery driver, shot her 10-year-old with water-hit beads in her face.
Data concerns have repeatedly been raised, especially following the federal government’s directive for employees to remove TikTok from their phones, citing the app’s parent company, ByteDance, and its ties to the Chinese government.
Bucks County officials said Wednesday they are barring employees From using TikTok on county devices. Geopolitical strife aside, it argued that selling underage users’ data violated the Child Protection Act 1998.
Officials were asked whether the responsibility for managing teens’ social media use should be left to parents instead.
According to Commissioner Robert Harvie, parents want to address their children’s social media use but don’t know where to turn.
Trust in social media companies to moderate content for minors is low, with a Pew Research study showing that nearly half of parents say inappropriate content is directed to their children on YouTube, often through the companies’ obscure algorithms. reported that it appeared in
“This is the first group of young people to experience this kind of situation and everything is new. [to parents]said Harvey. “It’s kind of like the first generation when we know that cigarettes are so harmful. Being a parent requires information, but in many ways that information is hidden.”
